Magic: The Gathering C/D

is that the 'GP new york city' in may?

yah - as i was typing my post the wrens 'secaucus' came up on the playlist im listening to so i used it as a placeholder for 'random play in northern new jersey' but it turns out the gp is, in fact, in secaucus. but yah its being billed as gp nyc for maximal confusion of gold-level euros attending the event

ok i'm busy that weekend unfortunately. looking at minneapolis and pittsburgh as possibilities, both are also standard

wow serious MTG players huh.

i just bought a bunch of rares to complete dark jeskai and hardened scales decks that are cycling out in like 6 weeks :/

yeah the combination of faster standard rotations and unusually expensive staple cards right now is kind of offputting but i am hopeful it will normalize again

the mistake they keep making over and over is jacking up the mana fixing for a multicolor-themed block while simultaneously jacking up the power of the multicolor spells as if they're harder to cast. it's really soured me on multicolor sets at this point, i think standard is more fun when there aren't any.

intersting. i just started playing again last year after 15 years break, and all i've been doing is drafting, so i don't have much of a nuanced view of standard. crazy how much stronger creatures have gotten. anyway i'm on a cold streak playing draft, so it'll be nice to finally have a standard deck to play even if it's just for a few weeks.

i find it really interesting how draft vs. standard as the predominant way to play seems to vary regionally

also cider i am probably playing gp secaucus in the spring. maybe we can convince iatee to play standard and have a team ilx in the event

I was actually just talking to one of my friends about how I would play this standard if I didn't have to actually buy any cards, it seems pretty fun. maybe I'll borrow someone's deck.

I t32d the scg event this weekend

never got on camera actually, despite being at top tables for a lot of rounds. like half of my friends were on camera at one point. my theory is they didn't want to have to pronounce my name.

the jersey GP will be the new standard format though

losing the 4 color mana bases should shake things up a lot

i'm mostly drafting because my ancient collection has nothing for standard or even modern, and it's too weak to use in vintage or legacy. drafting has grown on me quite a lot, though, because i hate to waste paper just opening packs and never using 90%+ of the cards in them xxp

yeah rotation will be very interesting. im skeptical it will be much cheaper though since jace will probably go up if madness and/or threshold cards are at all playable

I t32d the scg event this weekend

nice! whatd you play? also i you do want to play that gp msg if you want to borrow a deck

yeah I think it's likely I'll go, at the very least to hang out w/ people. but I'll probably play.

I played death and taxes w/ red for imperial recruiters and magus of the moon, which I've played for a while now. magus of the moon through aether vial is pretty fun. I feel like someone could probably brew up a variant that would work in modern now that nobody plays basic lands or lightning bolts.

is anyone going to gp dc next weekend?

xpost

I don't know that jace will drop in price post-rotation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it sees less play in standard because it will be much harder to flip reliably without fetch lands

i am playing neither detroit (despite doing a dece amount of testing and having what i think is an insane deck) nor dc since i have to work both wknds. probably not playing much magic until soi release/barcelona really

pro tour's in honolulu later this year, which is my hometown. wish i could qualify, haha

Upset that I'm gonna miss GP DC (my hometown) cause team events make Magic ten times more fun for me. My favorite tournament experience ever was GP Providence a few years ago, despite my team having an awful pool and scrubbing out day 1. But I am making plans to attend GP Beijing (Innistrad sealed) next month. Will be interesting dealing with a new format where I can't read most of my opponents' cards

http://mythicspoiler.com/soi/cards/declarationinstone.jpg

that art is wonderfully fucked up

very powerful too, will have a pretty big impact on go-wide strategies, you can sweep up Nissa or Gideon tokens with no downside

"investigates"?

new mechanic for the set. get an artifact that you can sac for 2 generic mana to draw a card

looking for to losing a lot of games to nu-Avacyn

ugh sealed leagues have been out for like a week and they have cleaned me out. OOB draft was going just great too. so much regret.

Dc was a lot of fun even though we flamed out after we lost to larsson / mueller / deng in an early round. Our pool was only okay and I was playing a deck with no rares but this format seems to be so consistently good for certain teams that I feel like we have no one to blame but ourselves.

otoh the friends we went with finished 30th

yeah i couldn't make it but one of my friends got 8th which apparently is not good enough for a pt invite at a team gp

man this set looks so wild, game is definitely more interesting when they don't keep falling back on multicolor and endless +1/+1 counter mechanics

i am very curious to see how it all plays. basically outside of maybe transform none of the mechanics are "safe" or a slam dunk, they could all fall totally flat. i like that madness/delirium give you choices that are contrary to ABC magic, i think that bodes well. i am starting to get the impression that these clue tokens are going to be all over the place which i suppose makes sense because the mechanic needs to be very visible to have any chance of not failing. the extra card draw synergies nicely with incentives to discard, and that plus self mill makes me think decking might be a legit wincon to build for. the cool transform mythic is the first card that springs to mind but that uncommon 0/3 that mills 3 each turn with delirium could get nasty.

this is the 3rd block with madness and it played well the first 2 times imo

'choices that are contrary to ABC magic' are why people liked the last innistrad too, you occasionally ran into games where you were e.g. racing to mill your own deck away before your opponent could sacrifice all their creatures. insanity via game mechanics

yeah exactly - people complained a lot about Odyssey block because it encouraged people to pitch their hand but I love that style of Magic. the Delirium mechanic is very interesting, we'll definitely have to see more of the commons to see how well it plays. Spell Mastery I didn't like b/c it sometimes led you to stuff your deck with garbage but I feel like they'll handle it much better this time around

also the art/concepts of all the flip cards are great

OTJ is such an amazing, skill-testing format that im really excited to see madness and quasi-threshold come back. i cant imagine that theyll allow the format to be as skill-favoring as OTJ but it would nice to have a limited format that felt very decision-based after the run of sets since dragons

I just don't see delirium turning on regularly in limited

depends if there's a bunch of token making instant and sorcery at common, otherwise your creature count is going to bottleneck it even with all the support cards we've seen

If Delirium can't be regularly achieved in limited, it seems like the set will be a failure. There's so many Delirium cards. I thought in OTJ they set Threshold at the right number - easy to achieve if you build around, not that easy otherwise - so I have faith that they will do this right

it doesn't seem much more difficult than threshold to me, if you make it a priority in deckbuilding then you'll be able to do it.

having a couple playable artifact creatures at common would help it a lot too, like a 2 mana 2/1 that can trade early gets you halfway there. i kinda expect to see that

this set seems fun enough but already kinda seems like it's gonna be ultimately forgettable unless they've been sandbagging some stuff

clues seem like they'll play well mechanically in limited but aren't very elegant. does anyone want to play a constructed deck and have to carry around a bunch of clue tokens?

you can always just use a die for clues

What makes Clue tokens different from Eldrazi Spawn, Master of Waves Elementals, Elspeth Soldiers, Goblins, or any of the many many tokens we've seen in Constructed? And yes, you can easily use a die

creature tokens have been a part of the game since alpha, non-creature tokens are kinda weird one offs

If Delirium can't be regularly achieved in limited, it seems like the set will be a failure. There's so many Delirium cards. I thought in OTJ they set Threshold at the right number - easy to achieve if you build around, not that easy otherwise - so I have faith that they will do this right

yeah there's still 100+ commons and uncommons to be spoiled here and I would imagine a lot of them are cards that help turn this mechanic on, either artifact creatures or token-making stuff or Seal-like enchantments

iirc in the couple of boosters that were spoiled early there were several commons with incidental self mill

the issue isn't the ability to get cards into your graveyard, it's that the typical limited deck has only about 8 cards that aren't creature or land and you need to get at 2 of those. It'll happen eventually in long games but making it happen on curve seems like it'll be rare

right but they go hand in hand to an extent. like, there are already a higher than typical number of playable enchantments spoiled, some that have spell like effects (e.g. the flash werewolf anthem as combat trick) and even a couple that produce tokens. the potential for having more card type variety is being built in. my guess is that the tools will be there but it won't just come together unless you go all in.

Ah, there's the cycle of Seal enchantments. I think we're gonna see a few common artifacts along those lines too (Explosive Apparatus has already been spoiled).

lol @ "Uninvited Geist"

not very much instant speed discard at all, and no mana-free repeatable discard abilities.

aggro seems v much back on. some very aggressively costed red creatures.

looks p good afaict. tons going on.